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ABSTRACT

Based on numerous past studies, there is a questionable issue of what really encourage employees from adopting a system in their daily work activities. This research objective is to identify the relationships between Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use, Enjoyment and Computer Self-Efficacy towards Behavioural Intention to adopt online technology application among employees at a property developer company or known as PKNS, located in Klang Valley. A quantitative design is deployed in this research. A purposive sampling was used to collect data at the property developer premises. A total of 200 respondents were asked to rate questionnaire using 5 Likert-scale instruments. Findings show that Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use, Enjoyment and Computer Self-Efficacy have a significant relationship towards the employees' behavioural intention to use the online technology application at their workplace

1. INTRODUCTION

The adoption of electronic HRM in the daily HR activities has brought about a significant impact on organizational effectiveness and efficiency (Ruel and Van Der Kaap, 2012 ). With such change, the shape of administrative matters in organizations is taking a pace of change with the intention to reach the optimum productivity level, especially in human resource management as new technologies are supposed to add value and bring about efficiency and empowerment (Salman et al., 2013 ).

In fact, electronic HRM’s implementation in organizations has the ability to promote sustainability as it reduces negative environmental, social and economic consequences (Yusoff et al., 2015 ). This further reduces environmental waste, social waste, and economic waste. Success in today's hypercompetitive markets depends less on advantages associated economies of scale, technology and access to capital; and more on innovation, speed, and adaptability (Pfeffer, 1998 ). But such usage depends on the behavioral intention of users to use electronic applications as there are factors that contribute to the employees’ acceptance in adapting to this new electronic environment which could hinder their performance towards productivity of the organization. Terzis and Economides (2011 ) have found among others how Behavioral Intention has significantly attributed to Perceived Usefulness and Perceived Ease of Use as they have studied the acceptance and use of computer-based assessment in the research.

1.1. Background of Study

Being one of the top Government Linked Company property developers of Selangor, Perbadanan Kemajuan Negeri Selangor or known as PKNS has always put productivity as a priority in operating its core business ever since its establishment in 1964. It welcomes approaches that could enhance any time-consuming process in order to increase the productivity and most importantly to remain relevant in the property market that always demanding and revolving. One of the ways as to improve the productivity is through the enhancements of the existing human resource management electronically that could bring success to the organization. Such introduction of Electronic Human Resource Management (EHRM) in any organization is expected to facilitate a more efficient and strategic way of working for Human Resource (HR) professionals. In facts, Shrivastava and Shaw (2003 ) stated that the Electronic Human Resource Management (EHRM) provides HR functions with the opportunity to create new avenues for contributing to the organizational success and such success is contributed and directly related to the productivity. Thus, it shows that the performance of an organization relates to the productivity of the workforce within the organization itself. This was confirmed by Iqbal et al. (2018 ) that stated greater use of EHRM practices directly leads to an improvement in labor productivity.

There are many ways and methods to increase productivity at the various level of professionalism in any organizations. As for PKNS, Enterprise Web Based Access Attendance Automation Control and Security System (EWACS) application is one of them. Using this electronic tool could help employees to fill up and monitor records and retrieval throughout any duration of their leave applications without much time spent as everything is fast through a click of a finger. As for HR Department, employees’ movements within working hours and the working records could be monitored through intranet service, conveniently faster and reliable and most important, at anytime and anywhere within the PKNS office building without the use of paper. But in order for employees to contribute towards productivity via the electronic application, such application should be well received and trusted before being adopted.

Failure to use such electronic application in PKNS would affect the employee's performance in terms of inefficient and ineffective output that will lead to lower productivity due to time lost and time-consuming activities, backlogging in decision making and cost-wasting activities. Currently, there is already an outcry among the employees towards the EWACS application that has been implemented ever since PKNS moved to its new green building in 2016. Despite moving to the new application which incorporates multiple modules that is accessible to all levels of staff, such application simply does not receive a warm welcome as it invites unfriendliness, uncertainty, and hesitation among the users. With such vague and discomfort situation, this would halt and reciprocate the actual purpose use of using EWACS in terms of optimization and spent cost over the purchase of such application. This is not in line with PKNS shared values of “Pelanggan Diutamakan” (Customers First); “Komited Ke Arah Kecemerlangan” (Committed to Excellent), “Nilai Professional” (Professional Values), and “Sinergi Berpasukan” (Team Synergy). Without these, achieving the vision and mission of PKNS as one of the Government Linked Company of the Selangor state will look uncertain and pointless.

Concurrently, the application of EWACS is in line with PKNS Quality commitment to MS ISO 14001:2015 towards a sustainable environment that stresses in protecting the environment for the future generation.This study, will help PKNS to understand the reasons behind such reluctance among PKNS staff at all level towards EWACS application and what the users want or expect from the application. It is hoped that Human Resource Department will work towards improving and upgrading the existing features of EWACS as to make full use of it, that finally contribute for better productivity of the organization while optimizing the needs of the stakeholders.

This research identifies factors that contributed to employees’ intention to adopt electronic application at work place. This is critical as it indirectly results in better productivity and sustainability of the organization. Without such exploration, the push factors that encourage PKNS staff to use EWACS may not be determined as employees may not be interested in using such an electronic application.

1.2. Research Questions

The research questions for this research are as follows:

Does Perceived Usefulness (PU) have relationship towards using EWACS System among PKNS employee?

Does Perceived Ease of Use (PEOU) have relationship towards using
EWACS System among PKNS employee?

Does Enjoyment have relationship towards using EWACS System among PKNS employee?

Does Computer Self Efficacy have relationship towards using EWACS
System among PKNS employee?

1.3. Research Objectives

The main research objective is to identify the factors that is related to employees' behavior in adopting EWACS System as part of the organization needs. By doing this, it will help the employer to understand the shortcomings of the existing system thus to accommodate better facilities towards the system usage in promoting works efficiency. The specific objectives are;

To determine the relationship between Perceived Usefulness (PU) towards Behavioral Intention (BI) in using EWACS system.

To determine the relationship between Perceived Ease of Use (PEOU) towards Behavioral Intention (BI) in using EWACS system.

To determine the relationship between Enjoyment (ENJ) towards Behavioral Intention (BI) in using EWACS system.

Such introduction of Electronic Human Resource Management (EHRM) in any organization is expected to facilitate a more efficient and strategic way of working for Human Resource (HR) professionals. In facts, Shrivastava and Shaw (2003 ) stated that the Electronic Human Resource Management (EHRM) provides HR functions with the opportunity to create new avenues for contributing to the organizational success and such success is contributed and directly related to the productivity. Thus, it shows that the performance of an organization relates to the productivity of the workforce within the organization itself. This was confirmed by Iqbal et al. (2018 ) that stated greater use of EHRM practices directly leads to an improvement in labor productivity. But in order for employees to contribute towards greater productivity via an electronic application, such application should in the first place needs to be well received, accepted and trusted before being adopted for regular use. This is in line with Sargolzaei (2017 ) which states that for technologies to improve productivity, they must be accepted and used by users that can be members of the external user such as the citizen.

Adding to this, EHRM can enable the organization to improve labor productivity by performing HR activities quicker than traditional practices and enabling non-HR employees to focus on core duties (Strohmeier, 2007 ; Parry, 2011 ; Parry and Tyson, 2011 ) . This was later confirmed by Al-Hmouze (2016 ) that application of electronic human resources has a positive effect on raising the efficiency of companies, giving the company a competitive advantage through quick adaptation to external changes. Through the electronic application of paperless working environment, less dependency on manual entry is available and this will decrease the reliance on paper for copying, printing and storing which turn out to be a reduction in cost. In the long run and from the environmental aspect, this directly preserves natural resources, prevent pollution and reduce wastage and energy for the sake of the future generation (Ahmad, 2014 ).

2. LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1. Perceived Usefulness (PU)

As stated by Davis (1989 ) Perceived Usefulness refers to the enhancement of job performance through a particular system. In order to create such enhancements, the users need to have a driver that initiate the sense of liking to use the new system which is Behavior Intention. Dohan and Tan (2013 ) in his study through meta-analysis Research Paper has concluded that there is a strong relationship between Perceived Usefulness and Behavior Intention. With this Behavior Intention, it helps to shape the use on such electronic application as Elkaseh et al. (2016 ) discovered how an electronic application impacts user through the Perceived Usefulness in which when the application is simple and easy to use, the users will have more intention to use electronic application. Simply put, individuals who feel the application is more useful and users will have more intention to use the application.

2.2. Perceived Ease of Use (PEOU)

Perceived Ease of Use has been widely accredited by many researchers for its role as a determinant towards Behavioral Intention to use technology. Among them are Abdullah et al. (2017 ) and Li et al. (2012 ). Abdullah et al. (2017 ) state that individuals’ technology adoption could be estimated based on their intentions which is influenced by a preconceived idea on easiness and usefulness of an application. While Li et al. (2012 ) states how the factor “ease of use”, along with other factors, facilitates an application of e-learning process among users. In PKNS EWACS application context, this could lead to more staff will be using it with ease and effortlessly. Undeniably, the roles of these both two basic constructs have a great impact on the succession of online application implementation as proven by many scholars.

Davis (1986 ) firstly suggested that the actual use of a system is behavior and that only two beliefs would influence the users that are PU and PEOU. Davis (1989 ) even had exposed how Behavioral Intention to use technology is influenced by these two constructs where users can either respond favorably or unfavorably towards engaging the EHRM system. It was further discovered that PEOU has a significant relationship with PU because a system that appears easier to use will be regarded as more useful (Davis, 1993 ). Another finding by Abdullah et al. (2016 ) is that upon completing an online survey questionnaire, PU and PEOU were among the important factors that should be considered in the implementation of the electronic application. Nor Redzuan et al. (2016 ) highlighted EHRM needs to be equipped with good characteristics like friendly-approach, flexible and with examples in order to induce the perspective of Perceived Usefulness and Perceived Ease of Use, thus getting the attention of the employees’ intention to use EHRM.

2.3. Enjoyment (ENJ)

The external factor of Enjoyment (ENJ) plays an important role in the online application. The main issue about the relation between Enjoyment towards Behavior Intention is whether ENJ is influenced by the user’s intention to use. Nusair and Kandampully (2008 ) defined ENJ as the device that attracts the attention of the online system users with enjoyable inputs that is essential in attracting, satisfying and retaining users. Yi and Hwang (2003 ) has investigated the actual use of Blackboard (an online application) by university students and found the important role of ENJ as a positive influence on the decision of students (respondents) to use Blackboard and subsequently on the actual use. While Goetz et al. (2006 ) showed that ENJ has a clear linkage to learning behaviors such as self-regulated learning and creative problem-solving, the discovery by Alenezi et al. (2010 ) has revealed that users of students at Saudi Arabian Universities with higher perceived enjoyment towards e-learning would have better intention for e-learning activities as it has significant influenced their intention to use e-Learning.

2.4. Computer Self- Efficacy (CSE)

Previous studies show that self-efficacy played a vital role in explaining the adoption of e-learning technologies or system (Bhatiasevi, 2011 ; Park et al., 2012 ; Brown et al., 2016 ) . Computer Self Efficacy (CSE) refers to one's belief about his/her ability to accomplish a particular task using the computer Jia and Eder (2009 ). It attracts user’s behavior towards using a computer as individuals in the high level of CSE will be confident in their capability to overcome any difficulties when using computers. While Terzis and Economides (2011 ) had investigated the factors that impact the Behavioral Intention to Use a computer in which Perceived Ease of Use (PEOU) was found to have significantly attributed to Computer Self Efficacy (CSE) and Perceived Usefulness (PU) was significantly attributed among others to Perceived Ease of Use (PEOU). But there are journals that describe the relationship between self-efficacy and perceived usefulness with different results. Studies like by Al-Ammary et al. (2014 ); Chow et al. (2012 ); Al-Mushasha (2013 ) found that there were significant positive relationships between self-efficacy and perceived usefulness of computer.

The study by Al-Ammary et al. (2014 ) confirmed that perceived usefulness and perceived ease are vital factors for predicting the students' behavioral intention to use social networks as learning tools at the University of Bahrain. While Chow et al. (2012 ) suggested that with computer self-efficacy was taken as the external variable, the system under their study was perceived as useful giving the respondents confident working with computers but they remained neutral regarding the ease of use of the system. Besides that, the results of a study by Al-Mushasha (2013 ) suggested that perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and computer self-efficacy is among important determinants of e-learning acceptance in a higher education environment. But at the same time, Ma et al. (2013 ) indicated there was a lack of significant association between the two constructs of self-efficacy (SE) and perceived usefulness (PU) with relating TAM with e-learning system. They discovered that CSE has a direct effect on the PU and an indirect influence on the behavioral intention to use e-learning system.

3. MATERIALS AND METHODS

3.1. Research Design

As this study seeks to identify the factors leading to behavioral intention to adopt online technology application at work place. Thus, a quantitative experimental design has been conducted to analyze the relationship between independent and dependent variables. Questionnaires are considered as the most appropriate method for data collection process (Taylor-Powell and Herman, 2000 ). The questionnaires were in the form of closed-ended. The arrangement of the questionnaires was set very simple and easy for the respondent to understand.

Data gathering method used in this research is non-probability sampling design. The non-probability sampling designs are fit into two categories; convenient and purposive sampling and this research used purposive sampling. The data was collected at PKNS offices in Shah Alam and Petaling Jaya. In this study, the size of the sample was 200 respondents who were the PKNS employees. The questionnaires were distributed to the employees from the two offices. Secondary data collection derived from the internet and other related journals to this research. This research has used an online database to search journals from the internet, for example, EBSCO and Emerald to find a related journal for this research. The instrument was adapted from previous studies and developed from the dimension of the variables. The survey questionnaire was divided into five main sections. Section A is dealing with respondents' demographic profiles. Using nominal scale item, gender, age, profession, current service office, years of service, current servicing department, education background, and level of computer literacy. This information is needed to identify and measure to what extent do these variables have an impact on behavioral intention to adopt online technology application at work place. In section B, C, D, and E, investigates mainly on dependent and independent variables. Respondents were asked to report their views based on the five type Likert scale ranging from 1, being with "Strongly Disagree" to 5 being "Strongly Agree". The questionnaires used English as the language medium for ease of understanding among Malaysian employees.

3.2. Reliability Test

The internal consistency of the scale used, which is the reliability and validity of each item will be assessed using Cronbach Alpha. Cronbach Alpha is considered the most commonly accepted measure of reliability. The following table reports the Cronbach Alpha of the independent and dependent variables for this study. The variables for this study were reported to have excellent reliability with a coefficient of more than 0.7. According to Pallant (2005 ) if Cronbach Alpha value is more than 0.7, which means that the data is reliable and if data is not reliable, appropriate action needs to be done on the questionnaire item.

Table-1. Reliability Statistics

Variables

Cronbach's Alpha

Behavior Intention (DV)

0.922

Perceived Usefulness (IV)

0.975

Perceived Ease of Use (IV)

0.682

Enjoyment (IV)

0.79

Computer self-efficacy (IV)

0.89

4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

4.1. Descriptive Analysis

In this research, a total of 200 respondents were selected from PKNS offices. The whole data collection process took approximately 3 weeks. A total of 165 usable response questionnaires were accepted and coded for further analysis. Based on the 165 responses, the demographic characteristic of the respondents was split according to categories that include gender, age, profession, current service office, years of service, current servicing department, education background, and level of computer literacy.

4.2. Demographic Profile

A summary of a demographic profile of 165 respondents is tabled below:

Table-2. Demographic Profile

The data has been tested for normality and it represents a statistically normal distribution (Gravetter and Wallnau, 2013 ) as depicted in Q-Q Plot and Boxplot.

4.3. Pearson Correlation Analysis

Based on Table 3.0 above, it is found that all values of Prelating Behavioral Intention of using EWACS to each independent variable (of Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use, Enjoyment and Computer Self Efficacy) indicated values of 0.000 which is less than 0.05. Similarly, Pearson Correlation Coefficient relating Behavioral Intention of using EWACS to each independent variable (of Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use, Enjoyment and Computer Self Efficacy) indicated values exceeding 0.50. Thus, this indicates that there is a strong positive and significant correlation between each Independent Variables towards Dependent Variable.

Similar results were discovered by Nor Redzuan et al. (2016 ) through their study on Electronic Human Resource Management (e-HRM) that proved Perceived Usefulness and Perceived Ease of Use are able to influence the intention of the employee to use e-HRM as the P-values were less than 0.05 in the Correlation Test. Meanwhile, the study by Alenezi et al. (2010 ) too proved that there is a positive and small strength of the relationship between Perceived Usefulness and E-learning intention as it rejected the null hypothesis.

Table-3. Result of Correlations

**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

Findings by scholars of Bringula and Basa (2017 ) Computer Self Efficacy was found to have a significant and positive relationship with electronic services usage as it influenced the usage. Meanwhile, result from the study by Sung and Yun (2010 ) among others discovered that enjoyment was significantly affecting the Behavioral Intention in their study on mobile multimedia use. This confirmed the journals by Davis et al. (1992 ) that enjoyment was a significant determinant of behavioral intention to use computers in the workplace and Lee et al. (2005 ) found that Enjoyment directly impacts behavioral intention.

In terms of the relationship between independent variables, through Table 4.3 above, it is also shown that the relationship between each independent variable of Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use, Enjoyment and Computer Self Efficacy also indicated a positive significance sign as all P-Values have a 0.000 value which is less than 0.05.

5. CONCLUSION

5.1. Research Implications and Recommendations for Further Research

The study showed that the employees’ behavioral intention of adopting the electronic application is closely related to Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use, Enjoyment and Computer Self Efficacy factors. The findings will assist the management to find a solution or intervention program to increase the adoption of EWACS in PKNS. This can increase the productivity level among employees in PKNS hence increase the company’s performance. Furthermore, the research was conducted in a property developer company only and it may not be representative of other industries. Future research can identify the behavioral intentions among employees from other industries towards the adaptation of online technology at workplace.

5.2. Contribution of the Study

Online technology application for the human resource department can enable the organization to improve labor productivity by performing human resource activities quicker than traditional practices and enabling non-HR employees to focus on core duties. EWACS through the electronic application of paperless working environment, less dependency on manual entry is available and this will decrease the reliance on paper for copying, printing and storing which turn out to be a reduction in cost. In the long run and from the environmental aspect, this directly preserves natural resources, prevent pollution and reduce wastage and energy for the sake of the future generation.

5.3. Limitations of the Study

The present study was conducted among employees from property developer company alone instead of extending it to the other industries; this could give a different research finding. Moreover, due to the limited time, there was also a limitation on the number of sample size for this study. Thus, it was difficult to generalize all the information. In conclusion, this research aims to identify the factors contributing to behavioral intention towards adopting online technology application at workplace. The findings have highlighted that Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use, Enjoyment and Computer Self-Efficacy are found to have significant relationship toward employee’s behavioral intention. Thus, the implication of this research will be constructive for the management of PKNS or similar industry to strategize intervention programs for successful implementation towards adopting online technology application at work place.

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